Last weekend I went back to Tamarindo to go surfing again. I left on Saturday morning and arrived at the beach in the afternoon. I checked into a surf hostel which had a very friendly Colombian owner who was eager to please. I didn't surf in the afternoon but I managed to watch an especially beautiful sunset on the beach with a full rainbow on the other side of the sky. That evening I went to the skate park in town with my friend from work who liked to skateboard. It was a bowl and we met a couple of locals and an American living in Tamarindo who were spending their evening skating. After we went to the bar in Tamarindo with a half pipe inside.

The next day I rented a surfboard from the hostel and headed out to the beach. The waves were perfect for a beginner surfer because it very calm and a big wave broke every minute or so. This meant that it wasn't necessary to fight the waves to get back out and it was easy to rest between waves. The wave height also was perfect. It was just high enough to make good surfing but it wasn't too high that I couldn't handle it. The only problem I had involved the large number of beginner surfers hanging around. I caught so many waves that I got a lot of practice surfing. Before I was just satisfied by standing up and riding straight ahead in the surf, but after an hour or so of practice I was able to control the direction of the board. Sometimes I was even able to surf parallel to the wave, staying on the crest, just like you are supposed to surf. I probably won't get a chance to surf on waves like that again in the near future, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Back at my house I have been having plenty of interesting visitors. One day I got off my bed to find a huge bug on my floor with long legs and even longer antennae. Looking closer, it seemed to have claws like a crab. I couldn't figure out what it was, so the next day I looked it up on the internet and found it was a tailless whip scorpion which is entirely harmless but extremely cool looking. Another night my friend discovered a snake coming in through a hole in the screen window. It looked like either a small boa or a rattlesnake without a rattle. It went onto my kitchen table and tried to hide between the spices. It rattled its tail like rattler and raised it head up to strike if I got near, so I proceeded cautiously. Eventually we managed to get it outside using a broom handle and it slithered away in the darkness. After looking it up the next day I learned that it probably was the mildly venomous lyre snake which is not dangerous, but would have bitten.